In the past, every Lunar New Year, my mother would surely bake some festive cookies for the family. Being her key assistant cum tester, I had the least interest in making peanut cookies. To-date, I still find them neither tasty nor appealing in looks. Hence, they never make it to my “to-bake” list for Lunar New Year. As they say, never say never. I had a change of heart recently and decided to bake these “dreadful” peanut cookies. Oh!!! Woman, woman, you are a complete mystery in the universe. Professor Stephen Hawking is so right. lol!

But, in fact, I was inspired by my reader, Sandy Goh. Two weeks ago, she shared with me a precious peanut cookie recipe that she had learned from her “master sifu”. What fascinated me is that only four basic ingredients (eg peanuts, flour, sugar and oil) are used, and they are mixed according to a fixed ratio. This ratio works well whether you measure the ingredients in cups or grams. To that, I tweaked the recipe a bit by adding salt and butter. I also used more peanuts and lesser flour. So, what’s the verdict? I am pleased to say that the peanut cookies turned out to be crunchy at the first bite, and then softly crumbled with a melt-in-the mouth texture as soon as they hit your tongue. These cookies were fully packed with the fragrance of both finely grounded and tiny bits of roasted peanuts. The sweetness is just right and well balanced by a hint of salty flavour. Not only my family and friends gave it a thumb up, I also couldn’t resist the temptation to pop these little golden morsels into my mouth, one after another, and another, and……

Although this recipe is very simple and straightforward, there are a few things you need to watch out. First, as peanut is the key ingredient in the recipe, I would strongly recommend you to buy good quality peanuts and roast them yourself. This is to ensure that you get to taste more aroma of peanuts. Second, you may grind the peanuts to be superfine and smooth, but I prefer mine to be a bit coarse so that the cookies would give me something to munch on. Last but not least, remember to weigh each cookie dough to the same grammage so that they can be cooked evenly. Don’t skip this step!

Given that peanut is one of the most common food allergies, this recipe is not recommended for kids below 3 years old (age as recommended by American Academy of Pediatrics), kid who has a family history of allergies or kid who has had a food allergy in the past. If this is the first time you introduce peanuts to your child, please consult your pediatrician for further advice.

We will soon be heading back to my hubby’s hometown to celebrate the Lunar New Year. So, before I end this post, let’s me wish everyone a Happy and Prosperous Lunar New Year!!

Love to try out ur peanut cookies recipe after Feb cos’ still busy with work. U are always so meticulous and detail in ur recipes write-up. Thank u for the unselfish sharing of all recipes and tips and advice.

BTW, I lost ur email due to computer crashed and I lost the entire data in my computer. Lost all the connections, that’s why u did not hear from me.

Priscilla Poh: You’re so generous with words as always! Thanks a lot! Oh dear, sorry to hear about what happened to your computer. I will send you an email soon. Gong Xi Fatt Chai to you and your family! 😉

Happy Chinese New Year! Gosh I missed a couple of your past posts. They all look like recipes from a cookbook! I live Chinese peanut cookies, and these look beautiful! I wish you have healthy and prosperous Dragon year!

p.s. Thanks for the like on my picture, which lead me to come back here.. =D

Your cookies look so wonderful! perfect shapes and lovely golden color 😀 I couldn’t resist but bake these this morning. It tastes wonderful! I will definitely bake these again! Thank you so much for the detailed recipe and method!

Do you have any tips on how to remove the peanut skins from the peanuts quickly? That took the longest for me in the entire baking process :p

Haha thanks! I found a video on YouTube, in which someone was shaking the strainer outside his house (looks like he stays in a kampong house), it was really hilarious 😀 haha, but I felt dumb why I didn’t think about that earlier hehe

[…] The postal cost of the package was USD97. Suffice to say it was very, very expensive to send anything from Malaysia. I can’t remember a year since I’ve been in the US when I have not received a care package for Chinese New Year. So this year, I decided to make my own Peanut cookies so that I could do a side by side test with the ones from Penang. Here is the recipe that I used: (http://food-4tots.com/2012/01/17/peanut-cookies/2/). […]

I love the photos of yr peanut cookies and since I love peanut cookies, I tried making them myself. I was hoping to be able to eat them all year round rather than hv them only during CNY.

However, I am not able to get the color of the cookies to dark brown like yours. Mine is just light brown in color. I roasted my peanuts in the oven instead of dry fry. I roasted them for 40 mins at 180C..

Is the color of my cookie due to the different way of roasting the peanut? Otherwise, what can it be due to?